


collapsing stars

by princesskay



Series: fragile (handle with force) [5]
Category: Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Episode Related, Established Relationship, M/M, Rough Sex, Spanking, Under-negotiated Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:33:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23763151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princesskay/pseuds/princesskay
Summary: As the tension between him and Nancy mounts, Bill turns to Holden for an escape, but neither of them are quite sure where the boundaries lie any longer.
Relationships: Holden Ford/Bill Tench
Series: fragile (handle with force) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1552183
Comments: 6
Kudos: 63





	collapsing stars

When Bill invited Holden to have dinner at his house per Nancy’s request, Holden knew he shouldn’t have taken it as some kind of fascinating observational opportunity, but he couldn’t stem the spark of curiosity in his chest at the prospect. Bill had made it clear from the beginning that they weren’t going to talk about Nancy or his son, and that family topics were off-limits; Nancy had just inadvertently given Holden a glimpse into something he’d previously been barred from inspecting. 

When Holden asked Bill if he was nervous about having him and Nancy in the same room together, Bill shrugged. “Just do your best to act normal and polite, and let the women do all the talking. It’ll be over before you know it.”

And sure enough, Nancy and Debbie seemed to hit it off right away. After dinner, he and Bill were able to escape to the living room to share a few glasses of scotch where Bill said something interesting:  _ aren’t all fathers absent in their own ways?  _

Whether Bill had intended to or not, he’d let a lot slip that night, and Holden scurried along the behavioral breadcrumb trail, stealing every cue and tic, and tucking them away in the back of his mind. They didn’t talk about how the dinner went the next day, but Holden continued to think about the structured family unit, fathers and sons, husbands and wives, the careful balances and inconsistencies for the next few weeks, right up until their interviews with Jerry Brudos. 

The first interview was rocky, but the second trip to Oregon turns out to be extremely informative. 

That evening, Holden is in the bathroom brushing his teeth while Bill is slouched on his bed, reading a book. Holden peers past the door frame at Bill’s concentrated expression as he distractedly moves the toothbrush around. He’d never put much thought into the deeper reasons of why he’s attracted to Bill or why he enjoys the pain and punishments so much, but Brudos’ comments about how his impulses had “always been there” intrude deliberately into his thoughts, a niggling he can’t ignore. 

As he spits into the sink and rinses his mouth, Holden glances up at his reflection in the mirror.  _ What does Bill see in him?  _

Holden dries his face, and wanders back into the room. Bill barely glances up from his book when he plops down on the other side of the mattress, ignoring the second bed that he’s meant to be sleeping in tonight. 

“Five years old.” Holden says, rolling over onto his side to peer up at Bill’s reserved profile. 

“Hmm?” Bill mutters, his eyes flicking from the words on the page. 

“When he found the shoes at the dump. He said he was only five years old, but his interest in women’s shoes had ‘always been there’.” 

“Yeah. And?”

“So, was it sexual then? Is anything sexual to a five year old?”

Bill scowls. “What do you think?”

“I’m not trying to be lewd. I’m just wondering based on a confession that came directly from Brudos’ mouth. I don’t think he was lying.”

“Do you remember all of your thoughts and impulses from when you were five?” Bill asks, setting his book aside with a sigh. “I think it was more about the fact that they were forbidden rather than that they were sexual. That’s what kids that age do; they buck against authority.”

“Maybe you’re right. But when did it become sexual?”

“Shouldn’t we be saving this discussion for Wendy?” Bill asks, swiping his reading glasses and rubbing at the bridge of his nose. 

“Sorry.” Holden mutters, rolling onto his back to stare at the ceiling. “I’m just thinking.”

“You’re always thinking. You should really figure out how to shut that off every once in awhile.”

Holden gives a quiet scoff. “Believe me, I’ve tried - for my own sake.”

“Well, try harder. I’m beat.” Bill says, “Are you done in the bathroom?”

“Yeah.”

“Great. Lights off in fifteen minutes.” 

Holden doesn’t move from Bill’s bed as Bill gets up to take his turn in the bathroom. He stares at the ceiling while he listens to the faucet run and the muted scrub of Bill brushing his teeth. 

Last week when they were here in Oregon, after Brudos spent most of the interview lying, he'd been curious about the origins of the killer’s paraphilia, but he’d never imagined that it would go back to the youthful age of five. And Bill’s remark about what he remembers from his own childhood only encourages this winding, deepening path of curiosity. 

Holden climbs off the bed, and shuffles over to the bathroom where Bill is spitting toothpaste in the sink. 

“You said your father didn’t speak to you.” He says, leaning his shoulder against the door frame. “Was he a strict disciplinarian?”

Bill frowns as he straightens from rinsing his mouth. “Why are you asking me that?”

“I’m just curious.”

Bill’s gaze cuts away as he pats his mouth dry. “Well, there’s probably another few words I would use to describe him before disciplinarian.”

“What does that mean?”

“Holden, you want to talk about childhood and discipline so much?” Bill asks, casting him a guarded glare. “You tell me. Was your father strict?”

“He worked a lot.” 

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“I can remember him spanking me a few times when I was really young. As I got older, he started working more and more and I didn’t see a lot of him. My mom wasn’t much of a disciplinarian.”

“Oh, is that how you turned out so spoiled?”

“You’re calling me spoiled?”

Bill’s mouth tugs with a faint smile. “When’s the last time someone disciplined you?”

“Besides you?”

“Yes, besides me.”

Holden draws in a deep breath. “I don’t know. I was a pretty good kid;, and in college I mostly kept to myself.”

“You were, huh?”

“You find that hard to believe?”

“You don’t know when to shut up.” Bill says, shouldering his way past Holden, and sauntering back to the bed. “It can get you in trouble.”

Holden stands in the doorway for a moment, biting at his lower lip before he turns around to drive Bill’s point home. 

“You don’t think about it?” He asks. 

Bill grunts a sigh as he tosses back the blankets, and sits down on the edge of the bed. 

“Think about what?”

“Why?” 

“Why what?”

“Why you and me.”

Bill pauses with his hands curled around the edge of the mattress and his gaze tilted down at the carpet. His shoulders rise with a slow, hitched breath. 

“Is this a conversation you really want to have?” Bill asks, finally, slowly looking up at him. 

Holden’s cheeks warm, but he lifts his shoulders. “Doesn’t it make you curious? Where it started? Why it feels so good?”

“No.” Bill says sharply. “And you shouldn’t either. Just take it for what it is.”

“You keep saying that.” 

“Yeah. It’s good advice. You should take it.”

“We study human behavior for a living. It’s kind of hard not to think about it.” 

“Any harder than living with what your unnecessary questions might bring up?” Bill asks, casting him a pointed gaze. 

“I don’t know.”

Holden sits down on the edge of the bed beside Bill, and hesitantly meets his gaze. 

“What do you see in me?” He whispers. 

“Holden-”

“Just be honest.” Holden presses, reaching over to touch the back of his Bill’s hand. “Is it because I’m younger or less experienced than you?”

Bill’s eyelids lower slightly as a pale blush colors his cheekbones. He glances away, drawing in a deep breath through his nostrils. 

“In a way, you did take my virginity.” Holden murmurs. 

“Are you happy with that decision?” Bill asks, “Because it sounds to me like you’re picking it apart and comparing it to the impulses of a multiple murderer.”

“You said it yourself. Sex is our trigger; and if it does go back to the childhood and our parents like Brudos said, then-”

“Hold on. Our parents?”

“Freud did posit that all sexual deviancy stems from a misconstrued relationship with the parent of-”

“Holden, just stop.” Bill interrupted, his voice growing harder. “This - what we’re doing - doesn’t have anything to do with that. And frankly, it’s fucking disgusting and insulting that you would imply that about me.”

“I’m not. I wasn’t-”

“I know. You were just thinking.” Bill says, his eyes flashing. 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Great. Can I get some rest now? I told you, I’m exhausted.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Go sleep in your own bed.” Bill says, jutting his chin at the other bed, still neatly made up with tucked sheets. 

Holden gets up and walks stiffly over to the unoccupied bed. Bill turns the lights off before he even has a chance to climb under the sheets, leaving him to stumble across the mattress in the dark. 

As he settles down under the blankets, it feels a little like a different kind of punishment - like being sent to his room - divested of the pleasure and warmth of Bill’s touch, even if it had been painful. 

He squeezes his eyes shut against the thought that his own father had always been much too cold and distant, and the few moments of contact had always been brusque and void of affection. For the first time, he thinks that maybe Bill was right when he suggested they not think too hard about what they’re doing, and that maybe if Holden asks too many questions, he’s going to do more harm than good. 

~

The friction intensifies when Bill and Holden get back from Oregon, and Wendy is displeased with their tactics in the interview. Bill is curt and reticent over the next few days, spending most of his time smoking and smoking, brooding over case files, barely glancing up at Holden from across the few feet of space between their desks. 

After Altoona, Holden had thought they’d reached a turning point in the relationship where Bill was more willing to talk to him, to enjoy the evolving facets of their relationship without balking away, and to express himself and his desires more openly. But maybe Holden had pushed too hard, asked one too many questions. 

_ Maybe it has nothing to do with him.  _ The thought does cross his mind when he overhears a few terse phone conversations between Bill and Nancy, centered on Brian’s behavior from what Holden can hear from only one side of the brief discussions. 

He thinks back to the dinner at Bill’s house, and tries to imagine Nancy, with her homemaker smile, perfect perm, and modest clothing, getting turned over Bill’s knee. Despite having only a limited glimpse into their relationship, it’s difficult to imagine, let alone try to figure it into the normal, respectful ideal of the American family they’re obviously trying to uphold. Nancy would be aghast. 

There’s no room for that kind of roleplay, stress relief, or boundary pushing inside that marriage, Holden decides. And Bill must be dying to blow off some steam. 

A few days later, it’s pushing past five o’clock, and Wendy has already left work for the day. They’re alone in the basement, in the low light, the silence interrupted singly by the scratch of Bill’s pen on paper. 

Holden peeks up at him from the dossier on Brudos that he’s inspecting in preparation for the next interview. Bill’s face is clouded in a haze of cigarette smoke, the distinct shade of blue in his eyes distorted by the gleam of his desk lamp reflecting off his reading glasses. 

Holden flips the dossier shut, and leans back in his chair. 

“I’m getting ready to leave. How about you?”

“In a minute.” Bill says, not looking up from the legal pad he’s scribbling notes on. 

Drawing in a deep breath, Holden rises from his desk, and wanders over to Bill. As he circles around the desk, he can see that Bill is still looking at the Ada Jeffries case. Ropes tied in nautical pattern, white skin, broomsticks. The motive is still no clearer than Holden’s own impulses - than Bill’s. 

“Is everything okay with you?” He asks, quietly. 

Bill slides his reading glasses off, and rubs his eyes. “Yeah. Fine.”

“You’ve just seemed …”

“Please, Holden. Tell me how I  _ seem _ .”

“I said I was sorry.” Holden says, folding his arms over his chest. “I was just theorizing. Thinking. I didn’t mean to imply that-”

Bill shakes his head, releasing a heavy sigh. 

“What?” 

“Nothing. It isn’t that.”

“Then what is it?”

Bill leans back in his chair, his mouth pursing pensively for a moment. “It’s …things at home.”

Holden turns to lean his hips back against the desk, giving him an unobstructed view down at Bill’s tense expression. 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Bill draws in a deep breath. “Brian … He found some photos in my office.”

“These kinds of photos?” Holden asks, motioning to the crime scene pictures scattered on Bill’s desk. 

Bill nods. “Yeah.”

“Nancy found out?”

“Yeah.”

“She was upset?”

“I don't talk to her about this stuff, Holden.” Bill says, waving a hand at the picture of Ada Jeffries brutally impaled by the broomstick. “It upsets her, and then she sees it and wonders why I won’t tell her. I can’t do both. I can’t let her in  _ and  _ protect her.”

Holden nods slowly, considering Bill’s complaints. It’s a small detail, but yet another piece to the puzzle. It also backs his previous conclusion about Bill keeping his violent fantasies from his wife. 

“What are you doing tonight?” Holden asks. 

Bill’s brow furrows as his gaze swings up to him. “I still have to go home.”

“Tell her you’re working late.” 

“Great. And piss her off even more?”

“What’s done is done, isn’t it?”

Bill shakes his head, a wry smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You’re terrible.”

“Am I?” Holden murmurs, coyly biting the corner of his lower lip. “Terrible … as in deserving of punishment?”

Bill regards him with a narrowed gaze and his jaw rippling with a terse clench. Finally, he leans forward, and plucks his cigarette from the ash tray to take a slow drag. 

“Get off my desk.” He says, exhaling a stream of smoke. 

Holden leans away from the desk, his heart stammering in his chest. “Well?”

“Go home.”

“What about you?”

“I have to make a phone call.” Bill says, reaching for the receiver. 

Holden swallows hard. He wants to press.  _ Is that a yes?  _ But, he’s already asked too many questions over the course of the past few weeks, and he doesn’t want to shatter the careful balance he’d just managed to attain, the fine line between desire and anger, between Bill’s self-control and the total collapse of his inhibitions. 

Scurrying back to his desk, Holden arranges the dossiers, pens, and notebooks into a neat order, and gathers his things to leave. As he walks toward the door, he hears Bill mutter, “Hi, honey, it’s me …”

The door swings shut behind him before he can pause to hear Bill lie. 

~

When Holden gets home, he changes into his pajamas, and tries to look in the refrigerator for something to eat. His appetite evades him as his mind wanders elsewhere, belly writhing more with anticipation and hunger of a far different sort than the need for nourishment. 

He spends the next ten minutes pacing around the house, his limbs humming with nervous energy. It’s been so long now since that first evening when Bill showed up here, all dark, stoic, and powerful, fully prepared to bring Holden to his knees with a pleasure and pain that he wasn’t prepared for; but in this moment, he feels just the same - weak and trembling, longing for something he still doesn’t entirely understand, hoping that he’d done just enough to earn Bill’s approval or just the opposite. 

Bill arrives another five minutes later, and it feels like an hour has passed. Holden opens the door just as he’s getting off the elevator, and clutches the frame with one hand while he waits for Bill to make his way down the hallway. 

Bill had left his jacket and tie in the car. The top two buttons of his shirt are undone, and his jaw is set in a determined, chiseled line. When he reaches Holden’s apartment, he isn’t wearing any of the hesitation he’d shown back at the office; his eyes are clear and gripping, hunger swimming in their pale depths. 

“Are you going to let me in?” He asks. 

Holden pulls the door all the way open, and stands aside. 

Bill walks across the threshold, his gaze tracking its way around the apartment before reaching Holden again. 

Holden shudders beneath the intensity of his gaze as he eases the door shut behind him and turns the deadbolt. The loud click in the silence rakes across his already frayed nerves. 

“Was she angry?” Holden whispers.

Bill idly steps closer. “No, I think she was relieved.”

“That bad, hm?”

“That bad.” Bill echoes, and he sounds relieved himself. 

His fingers brush against Holden’s hip as he draws closer, the weight of his presence making Holden sink back against the door for support. 

Holden swallows hard, and lifts his chin to meet Bill’s gaze, slowly burning like glowing embers. 

“You could stay and fuck me all night and she might not care.” He says, his voice growing breathless as Bill’s fingers slip under the hem of his t-shirt. 

Bill grunts a coarse response, and shifts closer. His palm grazes Holden’s hip, his ribs, working its way up to locate Holden’s puckering nipple with his thumb. 

The touch sends a shiver racing through Holden’s body, pushing a moan to his throat that’s stifled by Bill’s mouth coming down. He turns his chin up into the gradually colliding kiss, and eagerly parts his lips after the first few, hard strokes. He leaves his hands clutched at his sides, clenching back the impulse to grab at Bill’s broad chest and shoulders in a bid to make this simmering foreplay move a little faster. 

Bill’s thumb and forefinger pinch softly at his nipple while his other hand reaches up to cradle Holden’s jaw. Pushing Holden’s head back against the door, he bears down harder with his mouth, nibbling hungrily at his plump lower lip. 

Holden moans, rising on his toes and squeezing his fists. When Bill’s tugging grasp on his nipple twists, he gasps out and instinctively pushes the heels of his hands into Bill’s ribs. 

Their mouths break apart, but Bill doesn’t release his nipple. Bracing his hand against the door beside Holden’s head, he presses so close that Holden can feel the growing pulse of his groin and the steady gust of his breath on his cheeks. 

“I’m going to do more than fuck you.” Bill murmurs. 

Holden blinks, trying to remember the conversation they were having only moments ago. Everything is already blanking white with need, details getting caught up in the rush and clench of his body. He can’t think of a smart retort with Bill’s body pinned against him, his fingers tugging and pinching at his nipple. 

A particularly hard pinch makes his head tilt back and his lips pull away from his teeth in a pained hiss. 

“Oh, ow, that hurts.” He whimpers, clutching at Bill’s shirt with trembling fists

Bill chuckles softly. “I thought you liked that.”

He releases his firm grasp only to run his thumb back and forth across the hard, sensitized peak. 

Holden bites back a moan as the touch rubs brusquely over aching skin, and sends a rift of need plunging down between his thighs. 

“I do.” He whispers, opening his eyes to meet Bill’s eyes, gone hazy with need. “I thought you liked to hear it.”

A faint smile tugs at the corner of Bill’s mouth, and he kisses Holden again, open-mouthed, full of tongue and teeth. When the kiss ends with a slick smack of parting lips, they’re both breathing heavily in the confined space between them, hips locked together to monitor the other’s wildly pulsing erection. 

Bill drags Holden away from the door by the elbow, and leads him into the living room where the only light is the yellow wash from the kitchen broken up by the island cabinets. He tugs on the front of Holden’s shirt. 

“Take this off.”

Holden pulls the shirt off over his head and lets it drop to the carpet. He glimpses the pinched pink bud of his nipple as he glances downward, following the trail of Bill’s fingers grazing his belly. The light caress makes his insides clench and the steady pulse between his legs to burst into a fresh, hard tempo. 

Tucking his teeth over his lip, he silences the whine already crowding at the back of his throat. It’s too early to be losing his composure, but Bill’s fingers are slipping under the waistband of his trousers; and it’s been days since they last touched - days which feel like weeks - leaving every inch of his skin begging for friction, both gentle and brutal. 

The trousers slide over his backside and sink to his ankles where they rustle into a crumpled pool. Bill’s hand strokes him through his briefs as he steps out of the pant legs and kicks them aside. 

“Christ, you’re hard.” Bill murmurs, the heel of his hand rubbing forcefully down the shaft. 

Holden gasps and clutches at his chest, trying to stabilize the shudder of his legs wanting to collapse out from under him. 

“How are you this hard already?” 

Holden chokes on a moan, and urges his hips into the coarse stroke of Bill’s hand feeling out every inch of his throbbing cock. 

“I don’t know, I … I’ve been wanting this for days.” He whispers, his cheeks blushing hot as he confesses. “It’s all I’ve thought about.”

“Did you cum?”

Holden’s eyelids flutter open, and Bill’s gaze is scarce inches away, slipping deftly under his skin like a filleting knife, peeling him open, exposing all his quivering desperation and withering truths. 

“Wh-what?”

“Did you cum? Thinking about it?”

Holden swallows hard. His cheeks feel as if they might burst into flame. Somehow, the thought of admitting to masturbating seems worse than bending over for a spanking - the self-indulgence, the lack of control, the shameful fantasies that had pushed him to that point. 

He gives a clipped nod. 

Bill’s fingers slip under the waistband of his trousers. “Last night?”

Holden clenches his jaw, but a whine emerges. His brow furrows hard in concentration against the slight brush of Bill’s fingers. “Yes.”

Bill tugs the underwear away from his cock, stretching the fabric slowly from his hips. It catches momentarily on his thighs before Bill gives them another nudge and they sink to his ankles. 

A deep, hard shiver runs down the length of Holden’s body as his cock stands free of any restraint, fully hard, twitching against cool air. 

“Just once?” Bill presses, brushing his fingertips down Holden’s throbbing length. 

“Ohh…” Holden moans, his hips lurching into the feathery brush that feels more like the burn of a branding iron threatening to cripple him. 

“Holden?”

Holden nods again, trying to focus on the line of questioning. “Yes, but I … I woke up this morning and I was so fucking hard, I-”

“You came this morning?”

“No, I stopped.” Holden whispers, casting a harried glance downward as Bill’s fingertips continue skimming up and down his cock, following it’s twitching pattern that seems to try to escape the torturous caress. 

“You stopped.” Bill echoes. 

“Yes, I wanted … I wanted this. You.”

Bill’s tongue glides in concentration across his lower lip. “How generous of you.”

Holden blinks as Bill’s tone takes on a layer of cool sarcasm.

Bill’s gaze cuts up as he retracts his hand from the slow drag against Holden’s cock, leaving it to throb achingly, untouched. 

“How generous of you to save me your table scraps.” 

Holden’s breath catches. “But, you-”

“But I what?”

“You told me to go to bed. In Oregon. I thought you were mad. I-”

“You didn’t ask.” Bill says, waving a finger at the chair a few feet away. “Bend over.”

Holden’s mouth slips open, his cock giving a raging throb of exploding arousal. Too shocked and trembling with need to do otherwise, he shuffles meekly to the chair, and leans over the back of it. He braces his hands in the cushioned seat cover, and feels the wooden frame bite into his bare hips. 

As he gets into position, heat scorches his cheeks; he isn’t sure if this is more humiliating than being bent over Bill’s knee, but that thought is only the least of his concerns. His knees are already trembling, his cock so hard it hurts, and he isn’t sure how he’s supposed to survive through to the end of the punishment still upright and over the chair where Bill wants him. 

Casting a tremulous glance over his shoulder, Holden watches as Bill surveys his position before stepping closer. His demeanor is calm and controlled, but Holden can see the twitch in his jawline, the fiery need casting like sun flares from his eyes. 

“You can’t help this, can you?” Bill murmurs, his gaze shifting to Holden’s backside as he runs a palm over the naked swell of flesh. “Putting yourself in this position for me.”

Holden purses his lips over a whimper and shakes his head. 

Bill’s palm grazes his ass cheeks methodically, tracing first one and then the other before squeezing the ample flesh in a firm grip. 

Holden closes his eyes, tries to breathe. It’s difficult to suck in a proper breath bent over in this position, more difficult still to keep his knees locked and steady. 

“Yeah, I know you can’t.” Bill says, giving Holden’s backside an introductory slap. 

Holden whimpers, his body flinching against the light yet alarming contact. 

“It’s just what spoiled brats do.” 

Holden doesn’t have a chance to protest that observation before Bill’s hand comes down again, raining a series of quick, sharp spankings across Holden’s ass that create a minor, humming sting across his skin. He twitches against each one, fingers digging into the corners of the seat cover to brace himself through the first phase. It barely hurts, but this is the part that makes him burn, that makes his chest claw with desperate need, longing for more.

Bill braces a hand against the middle of Holden’s back, pressing him down lower towards the seat. Holden’s legs strain to keep his feet planted firmly in the carpet, his muscles already burning and taxed from the tense clutch of desire. 

When Bill has him pinned forward, nearly rising up on his toes, he starts in on the next series of spankings, doling them out harder and slower, letting the pain sink in and sizzle down through his skin in between each one. 

Holden moans and lurches, his fingers going white-knuckled around the edges of the chair. Sharp, stinging pain bursts radiantly across his skin, building to a general burning sensation that sinks in deeper and deeper, like needles scorching persistently through flesh towards bone. 

Bill’s hand is unrelenting, finding a brutal cadence that Holden is powerless to writhe away from or thrust back into. Pinned over the chair, his backside is helplessly raised and vulnerable to every blow, and the rush of burning energy has nowhere to go but into the claw of his hands across the seat cover. 

Holden pants and cries out with every blow, his vision going blurry as the spankings mount with no break, no end in sight. He grabs at the seat cushion, trying in vain to brace himself, to not flinch and fight against every harsh crack of Bill’s palm. 

“Ohh …” Holden moans, the sound tearing gutturally from low in his throat as Bill’s hand strikes particularly hard, so hard that he can almost feel the bruise blooming. “Oh, oww … Bill-”

Bill’s hand pauses abruptly, and Holden writhes helplessly, draped over the back of the chair and unable to escape with Bill’s hand bearing down on his spine. His toes shift anxiously against the carpet as Bill’s fingertips trace the stinging hum encompassing his backside. 

“Oh, oh-” Holden chokes, flinching against the light caress. “Oh, fuck, it hurts-”

Bill hums a response from the back of his throat as Holden’s hands bat worthlessly against the seat cover, attempting to work out some of the recurring shocks of pain running through his body. Bending down, he grabs Holden’s flailing left wrist, and drags it behind his back. 

Holden clings onto the cushion with his right hand, struggling to maintain his balance as Bill pins his wrist at an angle against the middle of his spine. 

“It hurts?” He echoes. 

Holden nods, his voice emerging in a feeble whimper, “Yes, sir.”

Bill clicks his tongue. “We’re just warming up.”

Holden nods again, his body flushing with waves of heat and tingles. “Yes, sir. Please, give me more.”

Bill grunts a sound of satisfaction at Holden’s compliance. His palm slides over the shivering swell of Holden’s backside to graze his inner thigh. He clutches loosely at Holden’s leg, and urges him to plant his feet wider. 

Biting back a groan, Holden spreads his legs open until his feet are set as wide as the chair legs. The position makes it even harder to remain still as Bill slides his palm back up to rub against one stinging cheek and withdraws his hand. It comes back down again quickly, cracking across Holden’s ass with breathtaking force. 

“Ohh.” Holden chokes out, his body lurching forward against the chair. 

Bill’s fist tightens around his wrist, effectively trapping one flailing arm while applying pressure into Holden’s spine to keep him down while the spankings resume. With Holden bent over, his palm lands forcefully and accurately every time, meeting squarely with the tender curve of Holden’s ass cheeks and layering over already stinging flesh. 

Holden’s body trembles as he tries to stay upright even as the spankings threaten to send him collapsing to the ground. Strangled moans match every crack of skin-on-skin, followed by the shuddering, helpless flinch of his body instinctively trying to curl away from the pain. His struggling only seems to encourage the punishment - and in turn, Holden’s raging cock. He’s throbbing so hard he feels like he might explode as Bill’s hand falls in a hard, repetitive rhythm; and despite his admission that he’d come just last night, he can’t help the crushing desire, the forceful clamp of every muscle in his groin drawing unbearably tight. 

Bill pauses again, and Holden sucks in a trembling breath. His muscles ache and his backside burns; he can’t fucking breathe and his cock hurts, but he’s just on the verge of slipping into that haze of pain, the plane of muddled existence where he’s so overwhelmed with torturous punishment and arousal that he’s collapsing and pleading, folding in upon himself like a dying star. 

“Oh, fuck. Don’t stop.” Holden pants, his voice struggling from his chest in a ragged, high pitch that he only recognizes within the borders of this fantasy. 

Bill gives him a slight shake by the wrist. “Shut your mouth.”

Holden whimpers, pressing his lips shut even as his mind screams  _ please, please, please. _

“I’ll tell you how many you get.” Bill says. 

Holden nods and moans. 

Bill’s hand starts back up again, and he loses all sense of direction. Bent over the chair, the blood rushing through his body surges halfway to his temples and halfway to his groin, and he can’t breathe or move without feeling unbearably dizzy. His body floats in a haze of burning pain that pushes him just past the brink, into fuzzy territory where he can’t quite tell if he wants this to end immediately or if he wishes it would go on forever. 

He can hear himself gasping and whining desperately as he loses control of limbs. Bill’s hand is coming down so hard that he can’t bear it, can’t not fight because that’s what his body is supposed to do, that’s how his mind is supposed to react. His needs fight back against the primal urge to escape, and he ends up flailing wildly over the chair, bucking against every hard spanking, and losing traction on the smooth wooden frame until with a jolt, he collapses to the floor with his arm still twisted behind his back. 

The spankings cut off abruptly as Holden lands on his knees, one hand clinging to the back of the chair in a failed attempt to pull himself upright again. The coarse carpet burns across his skin, but he can hardly feel it with the overwhelming, fiery sting radiating across his ass. 

“Please …” He whispers, breathlessly, his body bowing forward and trembling. “Please, it hurts so much.”

Bill clutches him by the nape, and drags him away from the chair. Dazed and trembling, Holden doesn't fight it as he’s bent forward, cheek pushed into the carpet while his hips are urged up in the air. 

“Please…” He chokes out, his eyelids slipping open to glimpse Bill kneeling down beside him, his hand firmly pressing the submissive arch into Holden’s spine. 

“I don’t think you’ve quite learned your lesson yet.” Bill says, quietly, stroking his fingertips along Holden’s burning ass cheeks. 

Holden sucks in a sharp breath, and presses his eyes shut. He nods his head, delirious, bent on self-destruction. 

Bill doesn’t hesitate again. His hand comes down. And down. And down. 

The sickening crack of his palm meeting tender, raw flesh makes Holden’s belly clench hard, and the sound rattles around inside his brain, a testament to his humiliation, his hunger for this absolute submission. He crumbles, trembling, gasping for a proper breath that he’ll never be able to get; but beyond the white-hot burn of pain, he feels himself rending open, all his repressed need flooding free, all his longing met with this vicious streak of bliss that threatens to shatter him to pieces on his living room carpet. 

When he starts whimpering and pleading again, there’s no theatrics inside it. He’s finished, broken; and as Bill’s hand retreats, letting his battered skin cool against the soothing touch of air, he sinks down to the carpet on his side, trembling like a sapling caught up in a windstorm. 

Bill rolls him onto his back where the scratchy carpet abrades his raw skin. Holden whimpers softly, his jaw clenching against the flash of pain as Bill hovers over him, soothing his burning cheeks with the stroke of his thumb. 

“God, Bill …” Holden whispers, turning his cheek into the caress. “I fucking missed you.”

“I know. I can’t stand the fucking thought of you touching yourself.” Bill murmurs, bending to drop a faint kiss on Holden’s trembling lips. “You coming without me being able to see it.”

Holden’s mouth slips open in a shaky gasp as Bill’s fingers slip over his chest and belly, following the faint trail of little hairs down past his navel to where his cock lays throbbing and enraged red against his quivering stomach.

“Oh.” He whispers, sucking in a sharp breath at the slight graze of fingertips against his swollen, leaking head. 

“Mm,  _ fuck _ .” Bill groans, glancing down at Holden’s cock dribbling pre-cum against his scarce touch. “You’re just a glutton for punishment, aren’t you?”

Holden licks his lips as his hips curl eagerly into Bill’s fleeting caress. “Yes … for you.”

“Good.” Bill says, retracting his hand. “But you’re not coming yet.”

Holden bites at his lower lip, and tilts his head back with a low, agonized moan. 

“Come on.” Bill says, leaning back on his heels, and clutching Holden by the elbow to pull him upright. 

Holden sits up slowly, wincing as the rough fibers of the carpet scrape across his ass. His head tilts with a light-headed wave of dizziness, and he clutches at Bill’s chest to brace himself.

“You okay?” Bill murmurs, cradling his nape in one hand and stroking his cheek with the other. 

“A little light-headed.” 

“Okay, come on.” Bill says, nudging Holden’s thighs apart, and pulling him closer. 

Holden crawls forward to straddle Bill’s thighs, and wraps both arms around his neck as Bill climbs to his feet. Locking his ankles behind Bill’s back, he nestles his head into Bill’s shoulder and breathes out a contented sigh. 

Bill’s hands clutch his backside to keep him aloft, but the pain is only secondary to the satisfied warmth he feels wrapped securely in his arms. Pressing his eyes shut, he clings to Bill’s neck as they move down the hallway, further into the apartment where the kitchen light can’t reach, and he feels an exhale of relief entering into the bedroom where the rest of him is set to unravel to Bill’s practiced touch. 

Too soon, he feels the tilt of Bill lowering him to the bed, and the familiar softness and density of his bed sheets against his bare, exhilarated skin. He hangs onto Bill’s neck a moment longer as they go still against the mattress, their breaths shaky and thin in the silence. 

“Let me get the Vaseline.” Bill urges, giving Holden’s arm a slight tug. 

Holden lets him go, and his limbs drop limply to the sheets. Eyelids fluttering open, he glimpses Bill’s figure in the shadows of his room, dressed in moonlight, his presence eating up this space in a way it never has before. Holden has dreamt of him here, touching this most personal, intimate room with his novels and notebooks on the nightstand, his clothes rumpled in the hamper, his telephone by the bedside pining for a call, the sound of his voice invading this last small part of Holden’s world that he hasn’t yet touched; and now, here he is, osmosis complete, privacy tainted, just another muted secret for these four walls to hold while he tries to fall asleep at night. 

If Holden had not already whispered these secret longings to the dark, Bill’s voice confesses their terminus now in a low rasp. 

“Turn over. On your stomach.”

Holden wills his overwhelmed body to move, and rolls compliantly onto his belly. As he settles down against the sheets, Bill strips out of his clothing, his motions gaining momentum as he gets down to his underwear. When the boxers slide down, Holden can see how hard he is from among the shadows, matching Holden’s own simmering anguish.

Holden tries not to wiggle as Bill crawls back onto the bed between his pliant legs. One hand grazes the sensitive skin on the back of Holden’s thigh, garnering a shiver and a wash of goosebumps, while the other thumbs the lid off the Vaseline and dips into the ointment. 

Holden arches his hips eagerly into the slick stroke of Bill’s fingers down his cleft, lathering him in lubricant and priming the area to this gentler touch. He massages softly at the hole for several moments, letting Holden arch and tremble against it before he grasps Holden’s hip and holds him steady to the press of his thumb. 

“Oh God.” Holden chokes, his spine arching with a thrill of pleasure. 

Bill’s thumb pushes into him, a slow, steady violation that introduces his hole to delicious pressure for the first time this night - the first time in too many nights. Holden rocks back against it, gasping, already desperate. 

Bill hums a pleased sound as Holden’s thrusting submerges his thumb all the way inside. He starts rubbing in shallow yet firm strokes that urge Holden's taut muscles to relax, his body to eagerly give way to the penetration. It curls down within him just as he’s beginning to settle into the rhythm, and finds its way along the swollen border of his prostate. 

“Oh, fuck.” Holden cries, grabbing onto handfuls of the bed sheets as his body jolts with a hot bolt of pleasure. 

Bill nudges him by the hip, pulling him back up into a submissive arch, and Holden drags his knees under himself to leave his hole entirely vulnerable to Bill’s touch. Pushing his palm down into the dip of Holden’s spine, Bill extracts his thumb and delves back inside with his index finger. The touch goes deeper, a little harder, lathering Holden in Vaseline and teasingly grazing his prostate with every stroke. 

Holden’s mouth stretches open against the sheets, drooling helplessly as his overworked body rips at the seams, coming open and apart, willingly ready to be filled and taken completely. 

“Please .... more.” He rasps, his body shuddering through hot, needy intervals of limpness and knife-edged tension. 

Bill’s touch leaves him for mere seconds to gather more Vaseline, and Holden whimpers desperately in the interim, despising the aching void inside of him that he’d been wrestling with ever since Oregon. Bill’s fingers return, two of them pairing to burrow slowly into his hole, applying aching pressure. 

“Oh God, yes …” Holden moans, his voice fracturing off into a broken whine. 

Bill’s fingers pump into him, gradually building speed as his body submits. Every thrust goes through him like an electric shock, setting little fires, seizing his muscles, making his cock twitch and leak; and still, Bill persists, rubbing and rocking, curling and caressing, turning Holden’s body inside out with this practiced touch until he’s open and raw, gaping hungrily for Bill’s cock to fill him. 

Holden’s eyes are barely open, rolling back in delirious pleasure when Bill’s touch relents, sliding out of his slick, aching hole to let him quiver against the brutal kiss of cool air. 

“Oh, please …” Holden whispered, biting at his lower lip in smothered desperation as he casts a hazy glance over his shoulder. 

Bill is lathering his cock in Vaseline, hard flesh glistening in the low light.

Holden’s mouth drops open, always awestruck right before Bill fucks him with the big, thick length. His chest shudders with eager breaths, unrestrained, tangled with moans. A scarce plea scrapes from the hollows of his drumming chest, but the dull roar of need in his brain eclipses his powerless whimpers. 

Bill pushes up behind him, and the first graze of his cock across the tender pucker nearly makes him sob. He curls back against the slight pressure, gasping into the sheets and shuddering with need. 

“Please …” 

It’s all he can manage, a fraction or faint variation of everything he really wants to say which is:  _ take me, own me, possess me, make it fierce, hard and biting; don’t be gentle, please God, don’t be kind.  _ Yet still, it seems he’s speaking a language that Bill can understand even in the strangled moans and lapsing, humming silences because he presses up behind Holden, and guides his cock into the hole with no small amount of feral need. 

Holden cries out as their bodies connect, the first hard thrust seeming to fuse somewhere deep in his core. Bill lets his body adjust for mere seconds before he pulls back and thrusts again, nearly toppling Holden forward from his knees. 

Scrambling at the sheets, Holden tries to find some agency over his body, but Bill yanks his hands out from under him and crosses his wrists against his back where he pins them down. Holden’s face is half-buried in the sheets, taking the brunt of the thrusts, as Bill begins to thrust against him, his hips meeting Holden’s backside with deliberate, loud claps of skin-on-skin. 

“Ohh, ohh, ohh-” Holden cries every time Bill’s hips make contact and the powerful momentum ripples through his body like an electric current. 

He tries to lift his face, and Bill uses one broad hand to pin both his wrists against his back while the other grips Holden’s hair to keep him down. Sinking his fingers into Holden’s crown, he rises up to a steeper angle that has his hips hammering down against Holden’s backside with breathtaking force. 

Holden can hardly breathe as one nostril and half his mouth get suffocated in the sheets, held down by Bill’s grip. The dizzy wave returns, the feeling of his body wading out to sea, floating, losing gravity. Every fiber of him aches and hums, pushed towards the breaking point, seeking the edge of the world to tumble off of; he searches for that boundary, crying out raspy shouts of shock and pleasure with every bone-deep impact of Bill’s cock crushing him down into nothing. 

The burst of momentum slows after several breathless moments, and Holden gasps feverishly, head spinning, as Bill turns him over onto his back. He spills limply across the sheets, his limbs scattered, his body sapped of strength. 

Bill guides his legs up against his chest, and crawls over top him, folding Holden in half beneath him as he resumes his resolute pace. Holden’s ankles are hooked over his shoulders, giving him no leverage to return or mitigate the deep, steady thrusts rapidly splitting him open.

Forcing his eyes open, Holden peers up at Bill in the semi-darkness, and meets his eyes. They’re inhabited dually by a savage glint and a desperate need - a dependent fragility that is closely guarded, feverishly concealed. Holden can feel it in the clutch of Bill’s hand on his chin, forcing him to keep his eyes open and watching, and he can sense it in the tremble of Bill’s mouth, the only part of him not hiding behind this facade of indestructible power. 

_ He needs this as much as I do.  _

Then Bill comes, loudly and forcefully, cock slamming in deep and staying there as cum gushes in to fill the tiny, unoccupied spaces between them; and Holden can’t think anymore of what Bill wants, only what his own body needs, the way it’s flagging and shuddering in overworked desperation. 

Bill grunts in between gasping breaths as he tumbles through the last spasms of orgasm. When his trembling body goes still, he rests his forehead against Holden’s and draws in a steadying breath. He draws back slowly, wilting cock sliding out of Holden’s brutalized hole and leaving him quaking and dripping with cum. 

“Oh …” Holden moans, his mouth slipping open as that hollow ache rushes in to seize him. He can already feel the deep bruises forming, threatening to cripple him for most of tomorrow; but he can’t think about the sweat or strain, the flinching tenderness, or the burning pain. Bill’s hand is around his cock, stroking him; then his mouth - dear God, is mouth. 

Holden’s back arches into a stiff, shuddering arch as the slick, suctioning heat of Bill’s mouth slides around him, going down, down, down. His hands bat uselessly at the sheets and his mouth stretches open as pleasure rushes up through him, a tidal wave surging to claim the last scraps of his strength. As if he hadn’t come just yesterday, he orgasms now, thoroughly, deeply, and ejaculates into the persistent stroke of Bill’s mouth with a strangled moan. His hips begin to buck as the spasms sweep through him, and Bill pins him down, allowing only the minor shudder of his body, the forceful gush of his cum spilling in fast, slick elation across his tongue. 

Holden emerges, breathing hard, blinking against the spark of a dazed meteor shower in his eyes. He wants so many things - to move, to kiss Bill all over his wondrous mouth and hands and cock, to say aloud how good he feels, how he wants it again and again, to say aloud he missed this too much, even for just a week - but he can’t move, drained and paralyzed by a delicious overload of sensation. 

He lays still while his body drifts, and Bill gets up out of bed to retrieve a washcloth from the bathroom across the hallway. When he comes back, Holden cracks his eyelids open to watch in the ivory moonlight as Bill quietly wipes him down, this tender act finishing off all the rest. 

Bill cleans the last of the cum and Vaseline and saliva from Holden’s body, and sets the wash cloth aside. Gazing down at Holden’s faint smile and half-shut eyes, he strokes his cheek with the back of his knuckles. 

“What?” Holden murmurs, reaching up to clutch at Bill’s wrist and press his cheek into the warmth of his hand. 

“I have to go.” 

Holden blinks as that little bit of reality perforates this moment, and his chest seizes. 

Bill sighs, and pulls his hand free. He turns on the edge of the bed, putting his back to Holden as he reaches down to retrieve his cigarettes and lighter from the pocket of his trousers. 

Holden watches as the flame ignites, triggering a plume of smoke. The barriers going back up, the guarded responses percolating, the disconnect reasserting. 

“Do you masturbate?” Holden asks, shifting his gaze to the ceiling. “Thinking about me? Like I do about you?”

Bill scoffs, quietly. 

“Be honest.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not appropriate.” Bill says, taking a drag of his cigarette. “In my house, in my bed that I share …”

The comment trails off, Bill nearly forgetting his own rule.  _ They don’t talk about Nancy.  _

“None of this is appropriate.” Holden says. 

“Well, it’s my life. I can do damage control if I want to.”

Holden swallows hard at that defensive response. Now that they’re talking about masturbating and boundaries, he’s not sure where theirs lies any longer. 

“So …” He whispers, “I have to join you? I’m not allowed to … touch myself?”

Bill casts him a narrowed glance. “Do whatever you want.”

He climbs to his feet, and Holden scrambles upright.

“But you said-”

“It’s a fantasy, Holden.” Bill says sharply, his hand cutting through the air. “Which part of that don’t you get?”

Holden shrinks back against the sheets, his chest flinching and wounded. “I just thought-”

“Well stop thinking.” Bill says, swiping his pants from the floor, and jabbing his legs into them. “This isn’t about Freud, or discipline, or romance.”

Holden frowns. “Then what is it about?”

Bill sighs, some of his anger seeming to dissipate. Taking his cigarette from his mouth, he sits back down on the bed beside Holden, and takes him by the hand. 

“You like it when I tell you what to do? When I make you break down, and you feel helpless and out of control?”

Holden’s cheeks burn as Bill lays it out so clearly, the very basis of his desires. He ducks his head, and nods meekly. 

“Well, I’m on the opposite side of it.” Bill says, “That’s all this is. Two sides of the same coin. Submission and control - a fantasy. Don’t let it get into your head, into your real life.”

There’s a beat of silence, and Holden peeks up hesitantly. Bill is shaking his head. 

“Don’t even think about giving me that much control over your life.” Bill says, “You don’t know how dangerous that can be.”

Holden slowly lifts his chin, hesitantly meeting Bill’s gaze. He wants to admit that he’s already failed at that charge, that he’s failing even now looking into Bill’s eyes. Without thinking, he leans forward instead to kiss Bill’s mouth, pressing all of his yearning into the gesture. 

Bill reaches up to clutch his cheek, drawing him harder into the kiss for the space of a few, brilliant seconds before he pulls away with a muted gasp. 

“I really have to go.” 

Holden sinks back against the pillows as Bill gets back up, and finds his shirt wrinkled on the floor. He shakes it out before putting it back on, and tucks his cigarette in the corner of his mouth while he buttons up. 

“You should get a shower, get some rest.” He says. 

“I will.” 

Bill nods, his gaze lingering on Holden’s sprawled position in the bed before he walks back over to drop a kiss on the top of his head. His hand cradles Holden’s cheek, drawing his forehead into the gentle gesture. 

“That was a lot. I don’t want you coming to work tomorrow running on fumes.”

Holden nods, his throat tightening at the concerned note in Bill’s voice. “I wish you could stay … take care of me.”

Bill leans back, his eyelids shuttering against the suggestion. “I can’t.”

“I know. I wish.”

“Eat something, too.” Bill adds, “Okay?”

“Yes, I will.”

Bill nods, his jaw clenching. “Okay. See you tomorrow.”

Holden watches as he turns and leaves the room. The sound of his footfalls echo down the hallway, into the living room. The door opens and shuts behind him, and then that’s it - he’s gone. 

He lays in the sheets for a long time, digesting that last exchange with a fluttering heartbeat. Bill said not to mistake fantasy for reality, but he hadn’t fabricated any of the tenderness in Bill’s voice when he made Holden promise to look after himself; even if Bill can’t stay, he’ll take it. It feels just as good as, if not better than, the breaking of his body beneath spankings and sex. It feels like the longing in his chest has finally been touched, eclipsed, momentarily satisfied; and maybe that’s all he had ever wanted - not just for Bill to punish him and break, not just for the sex and release, but for the tenderness that comes after the violence, filling up the darkening void with a surge of warmth. 

_ That’s what separates them from the monsters.  _ Holden thinks, and he doesn’t care that he’s already willfully let Bill into his head, this fantasy to spill over into their real lives. For the first time in awhile, he feels happy. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I'm [prinxcesskayy](https://prinxcesskayy.tumblr.com//) on Tumblr!  
> 


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